


Pigeonhole Principle

by madwriteson



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Mild Angst, kissing in closets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27516169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madwriteson/pseuds/madwriteson
Summary: How do you prove there are a finite number of closets in the city of Atlantis? By making out in all of them.
Relationships: John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	Pigeonhole Principle

The first time John Sheppard kissed Elizabeth Weir was in a closet.

In retrospect, neither of them had really intended it to happen. Elizabeth had been buried deep in the closet they used for their dwindling stash of office supplies and their increasing stash of broken electronics waiting for someone to find the time to fix them, looking for that last box of the really _good_ ball-point pens that she knew had to be back there. John had come along looking for a broken earpiece, in hope of finding one with the bit that was broken on his current earpiece intact, and had found her half-crouched and hidden up to the waist as she dug through the back of one of the deep shelves.

He never could quite resist teasing her. He crouched down at her side and peered into the depths of the shelf after her. “Didn’t know you were taking up archaeology as a hobby.”

“Oh! Ow.” Elizabeth pulled herself hastily out and John stood just as hastily, taking her by the upper arms as she swayed a little and holding her steady.

“Sorry about that. You all right?” He looked her in the eye, checking for any sign that the bump he had just startled her into was any more serious than just that: a bump.

Elizabeth rubbed her hand across the back of her head, disheveling her already messy curls further. “I think so.”

“Let me…” He tugged her a little closer and reached up to probe carefully at the back of her head. “Not even a bump. Wuss.”

“It still hurt.” And somehow Elizabeth had her face buried in the front of his jacket now. Had he tugged her that close?

He took a half step back by instinct. Too close, this was too close, any closer and this… this _thing_ between them, this fearsome unacknowledged _thing_ would spring into the light, destroying any chance of him ever pretending he just cared about this woman as just a coworker, just a friend.

That half step was not enough. Not when it made Elizabeth tilt her head back and look him in the face, not when her mouth parted on a small sigh, not when her hand was somehow on his face, tracing the line of his jaw. He swallowed hard, and then she did, and that was what undid him, the way her lips compressed into a tight line as she swallowed and then parted again, as if waiting for him.

When he bent to kiss her she met him, his teeth cutting the inside of his lip as they collided, too hard, too fierce, too _needy_. A need that relaxed as they realized their mutual desire, but one that never quite went away.

There was only so much John Sheppard was willing to do in a public closet, but he did it.

“What now?” he asked after, helpless at the sight of Elizabeth with her lips kiss-swollen and her eyes half-shut with contentment.

She sighed. “Now we pretend this never happened.”

The answer John had expected, but one he resented anyway. “Could we talk about it?”

“What is there to say?” A wry twist of a smile creased the corner of her mouth. “I want you. You clearly want me. And any relationship between us is an _abysmally_ bad idea, even if it weren’t against regulations. I have to be your commander, John. And you have to be able to make military decisions impersonally. First before anything.”

“Out there.” The words were foolish, but he said them anyway.

“Sorry?”

“You have to be my commander, I have to be a military leader, but only out there. In Atlantis.”

“We’re not any less in Atlantis for being in a closet.”

“Still.” He reached out and slid his fingers down a strand of hair, wrapping the curl of it around one finger for a moment, indulging in the ability to touch her like this for as long as she would let him. “Be my commander out there. But in here, just… be with me. I think I need it.” He leaned in, pressed a kiss to that strand of hair before releasing it. “I think you do too.”

She eyed him somewhat fiercely, and then laughed and shook her head. “Ridiculous.”

“So?”

“So find me in a closet again and I’ll think about it.”

It almost turned into a game, over time. Never when they were needed elsewhere, never during an emergency that required immediate action, but somehow they found themselves together in closet after closet, exchanging kisses recklessly when they could. It became a comfort to Elizabeth, that even in all of this, the both of them could find time to love wantonly like this, one stolen kiss at a time.

She knew they probably weren’t being as subtle as they thought they were, but if others had noticed what was going on between her and John, they chose not to comment. Still, they kept to their closets, and to activities that wouldn’t leave them scrambling for clothing should someone come across them unexpectedly. Kissing in a closet was fine, but it wouldn’t do for the commander of this mission or her military chief to be seen in and out of the other’s quarters at odd hours of the night or day, and it wasn’t as if the mission’s supply of condoms had been impeccably managed enough that she felt justified in taking some for herself.

And sometimes she wondered if sex would break this… whatever it was between them. What would happen if some day they had the opportunity to pursue this openly, to make it a real relationship instead of the furtive, dangerous thing it was? Was the appeal just in the way they had to keep it hidden, in the way they didn’t dare indulge in all their desires, the way each encounter still left them wanting?

So she would take it as it was.

For now.

The fact that they made their decisions as a team should have helped, but it never did. Sketching out cold atrocities in calm fact, the sacrifices and sacraments of war, it all took its toll.

Some days all they could do in whatever quiet corner they managed to find was hold one another. Some days all they could do was whisper reassurances that it wouldn’t always be like this.

Duty always called them away too soon for more, anyway.

Those spots they never visited again if they could avoid it, an unspoken mutual agreement, an acknowledgement of the desperation of those moments that clung to those places like cobwebs long after the two of them were gone.

But it did not matter. There were so many nooks and crannies in Atlantis that they would never explore them all. The few they abandoned for the sin of having sheltered their darker selves were no loss.

“You know, I think I’ve kissed you here before,” John said, pressing his lips to the back of Elizabeth’s neck. They only had a moment—he had been about to pass her in an empty hall and had been unable to resist pulling her into what was little more than a nook, just out of sight from anyone passing in the hallway until they were right on top of it—but he was going to make the most of it.

“Have you?” Elizabeth let out a little hum of contentment as he pressed his lips to her neck again, finding her pulse thrumming hot and fast beneath his touch.

“This one, or the one down the hall,” he murmured against her skin, tugging her hips back against his.

“We’re clearly running out of novel places to kiss,” she murmured back, stretching against him in a way that had him dearly regretting how exposed they really were.

“I’ll have to find some new ones.”

She laughed, low and throaty. “Naughty man.”

A noise in the hallway had them springing apart, leaning casually against opposite walls of the nook, making up some nonsense conversation about staffing as someone from the science department passed their location and headed on down the hall with only a slight nod of acknowledgement to the both of them. John let out a sigh of relief once the woman was past.

Elizabeth’s sigh sounded like regret. “How long are we going to keep doing this, John?”

“Until I’ve kissed you in every closet in this city at least once.” That answer comes out without thought, flip and immediately regretted.

That wry smile twisted her mouth. “Even the ones in the crew quarters?”

“Even those.”

“That does present some logistical difficulties, even you must admit.”

“Elizabeth.” He reached across the nook, took her hands from where she had folded them across her stomach and held them tight in his. “Do you want to stop?”

She bit her lower lip as she looked him in the eye, and then shook her head, her gaze lowering to the wall beyond his shoulder. “But I keep wondering whether this will ever work outside of this place. If we ever leave Atlantis. Not that I ever want to, but…”

“But you’re a planner. That’s one of your strengths. And this is something you never planned for.” He squeezed her hands again.

“Something like that.” She was smiling again, a welcome sight.

“Maybe we wouldn’t have ever met if we hadn’t come here,” he said, lifting one of her hands to his mouth and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t last now that it’s started. No matter what the future holds.”

Her gaze caught and held on his, wide-eyed and desperate. And then, he saw the moment that she believed those words. “No matter what the future holds,” she echoed. And then she grinned, rather naughtily. “What are you doing for the next hour?”

“I don’t have anything on the docket.”

“Then I suggest we start making inroads on the closets in the crew quarters.”

John felt his eyebrows shoot up his forehead in shock. “Whose privacy are we infringing on?”

“Mine.”


End file.
